Letter: Vice Mayor should keep her word

H. K. Edgerton
Asheville, NC

Dear Historic City News editor:

It broke my heart when I read that Vice Mayor Freeman, who made the deciding vote to take down the confederate soldier’s memorial, said that if one black person would have stood up for the soldiers Cenotaph, she would have cast a different vote.

Where were you, Ms. Freeman on Martin Luther King’s birthday?  Where were you when I marched through this historic city carrying the table of brotherhood for these folks around here, showing my support for the Cenotaph?  Where were you on the other times I have been to town, teaching about the place of honor that men who looked like me earned during the war?  The men honored on the cenotaph interposed and sacrificed their lives for St Augustine.

Dr. King said he had a dream that, “One day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners would sit down at the table of brotherhood.”  Those that want to take this cenotaph down are not following Dr. King at all.

Ms. Freeman, here I am.  I am one black man who wants you to reverse your vote and keep the Plaza Cenotaph.  Will you do it?

There were four brave men of this city that the Cenotaph represents who look like me.  Dr. Alexander Darnes, was born here and under the tutelage of Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, became the first black doctor in the City of Jacksonville, just up the road.  He was a hero of the Spanish Flu Pandemic. 

And let us not forget the three brave men Anthony Welters, who was a member of the Kirby Smith Camp of the United Confederate Veterans, Emanuel Osborn, and Isaac Papino – all of these men who looked like me.

These men are speaking from that empty tomb on the Plaza, Ms. Freeman.  Keep this Soldier’s Cenotaph.

H. K. Edgerton is an African American civil rights activist.  He is a former president of the NAACP in Asheville, NC, an activist for Southern heritage, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the President of Southern Heritage 411.